bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

George Holland asks: "After designing several projects around PLD-based programmable logic, I decided to buy a FPGA development board (the Spartan-IIE based XSA-200) to experiment with something more capable. I'd like to find some good books on VHDL and FPGAs in general, but there are many to choose from. Some are aimed at beginners (I have a solid background in both low and high level programming languages and digital electronics), others gloss over the low-level details of an FPGA (covering RTL only, skipping floor-planning) assuming the tools with synthesize an optimal design with no manual tweaking. Trying to find something that fits in the middle is what I'm after. What books do Slashdot readers suggest? Ideally something that covers the WebPACK toolset from Xilinx or the Spartan-IIE would be best as that's what I'm using."